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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Hide the Facts = Censorship

Here we go again, we hear those trumpets blow again....
Back we go, contrary to my earlier promises, back we go to Monika Rathgeber.
Oh, you have forgotten who Monika R. is ? Monika R is the lady who was in charge of the finances of the Province of Salzburg. Remember, she's the lady who invested hundreds of millions of Euros, which the Province received from the Federal Government to build homes, in the money market. She, it was originally assumed, "verzockt" (high risk .gambled) funds and accumulated losses in excess of 345 million Euros.
Then they counted it all again and found that she actually made 70 Million Euros. It took weeks and weeks of painstaking search to establish this miracle. For a long while nobody knew where all these funds lay hidden.
Some people suggested that now all is okay. Monika didn't loose money playing the market, she actually made money doing this. Other people, a bit smarter than the average politician, said: "Hold it... gambling with taxpayers money is "verboten" or should be against the law.
So they established a panel to closely examine the entire sad affair. This "Examination Panel" (Untersuchungs-Ausschuss) called for witnesses, who will be examined. (An entire day has been set aside for the examination of Monika) and, of course, this Panel called for documents.
The documents were delivered. See there... entire sections were blacked out, however.
Rightly some members of the Panel protested, that such "Censorship" would make it difficult, if not impossible, to get to the bottom of the entire scandal.
The chair of this Examination Panel, one Ms. Astrid Rössler however commented: "I was told, that the black-outs  concern only personal data and in reading the documents I concluded that nothing essential was blacked out."
Now isn't this precious....  The Chair of the Examination Panel is satisfied to accept the censored documents, because 'somebody told her 'that only personal data were blacked out and in any event, reading these documents convinced her that nothing important was blacked out.'
How does she know, how does anybody know the importance of a blacked-out section of a document?
A Panel of Examiners must be given uncensored information.
For Goodness sake, we are not talking here of military secrets, the publication of which may endanger the security of the country...we are talking about documents, likely dealing with the investment procedures and financial dealings of Monika Rathgeber and her political  bosses. Are those politicians trying to hide their personal involvement in this nefarious affair? Why is the Chair of the Panel so quickly content with such censorship?
Something smells here to high heaven.
It would not surprise me if the witnesses  called would show up with a band-aid over their mouths, so that they could not reveal personal data, and, in any event, the fact that they could not talk 
doesn't really matter, since they would have nothing important to say. So the Chairlady of the Untersuchungs-Ausschuss was told by somebody.
Are they not ashamed of themselves?

You know who would be ashamed ?
Bertstravels, that's who.





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